So I collect rare books and magazines on occult subjects and alternative history. Some of you may have seen my past posts sharing things from my collection. Here are three extremely rare first editions by Maurice Doreal, founder of the Brotherhood of the White Temple in Colorado. Together they show how his ancient serpent race evolved through time from Atlantis to the present.
by Theagenes1
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So I collect rare books and magazines on occult subjects and alternative history. Some of you may have seen my past posts sharing things from my collection. Here are three extremely rare first editions by Maurice Doreal, founder of the Brotherhood of the White Temple in Colorado. Together they show how his ancient serpent race evolved through time from Atlantis to the present.
Some have suggested that he was influenced by Pulp fiction writers like H. P. Lovecraft and the creator of Conan the Barbarian, Robert E. Howard. But there’s no question that he was very influential in introducing shape-shifting reptilians into the early UFO discourse. I just did a deep dive on my YouTube channel on this topic for those that might be interested:
https://youtu.be/V8pRo8pcjcg?si=i6QDu8Z2QC6MELmk
The Emerald Tablets of Thoth the Atlantean (1939)
Doreal claimed these were translations of twelve tablets written 36,000 years ago by Thoth, an immortal Atlantean priest-king. Most people know the tablets for their esoteric content, but Tablet VIII contains something that will be familiar to anyone who follows modern conspiracy culture: an ancient race of serpent-headed beings who used a hypnotic glamour to appear human, infiltrated the councils of Atlantis, killed its leaders, and took their forms to rule from the shadows. They could only be detected by a specific word that only human throats could pronounce.
Mysteries of the Gobi (c. 1946)
This chapbook is incredibly rare and fragile. Here Doreal expanded the serpent race into a full alternative history. They were a primal race from the South Pole when Antarctica was tropical. They could project a mental image of a human face over their serpentine features. They infiltrated the ancient lost civilization of the Gobi, and the humans there developed a special word to expose them. The story ends with an atomic war that shifted the Earth’s axis, freezing the serpent people under the Antarctic ice. According to Doreal, they’re still down there.
Flying Saucers: An Occult Viewpoint (c. 1953-54)
You’ll often see this listed as being published in 1948, but based on internal clues it could not have been published any earlier than late 1953. By the early 1950s Doreal had updated his mythology for the flying saucer era. The most remarkable claim here is that Soviet scientists discovered ancient cities under the ice and revived over seven hundred serpent people from suspended animation. These beings then used their Shape-Shifting to infiltrate and replace the Soviet leadership. The ancient conspiracy had gone communist!
Doreal’s serpent race mythology didn’t stay in these chapbooks. It was amplified through the flying saucer subculture, influenced writers on both sides of the Atlantic, and eventually fed into the modern reptilian conspiracy theory.
This is a good example of the origins of a specific facet of the UFO mythos. None of it is new, it goes back to the earliest days of ufology, and many of the elements involved, pre-date it.